Archives for National Bus Trader

The U.S. transit industry’s 15 years’ experience adjusting to the Americans with Disabilities Act has provided the motorcoach industry with both a decade’s head start, and a handful of bad examples. One mistake the motorcoach community should not replicate is to permit wheelchair users to capriciously compromise their own safety. Safety versus Liability One response to our industry’s litigation-obsessed operating environment is that safety can sometimes be compromised to reduce liability exposure – at least in theory. One blatant abuse of this trade-off in the school bus community is the practice of instructing students to arrive at their bus stops

All of us come across good ideas. Sometimes we even have our own. More often we hear or read about them. Occasionally they fall into our laps. The latter happened to me just last week while attending a trade show. I had a short chat with the sales representative of an event recorder named SmartDrive. A competitor of also-San Diego-based DriveCam, SmartDrive effectively records the driver, the roadway and/or other objects or perspectives, depending on the camera positions selected and the parameters to be observed. Like most such devices, the hard drive can be programmed to overwrite events when the

Actuaries and Soothsayers When many motorcoaches still on the street began their lives, many members of the industry thought that wheelchair-accessible coaches would not become commonplace in their lifetimes. But that was before motorcoach suspension systems became a selling point to potential AMTRAK-riding laptop users whose cursors jump around the screen from the roll, pitch and yaw of old diesels and prehistoric roadbeds. It was before risk management became a mundane operating function, and expert witnesses began to outnumber dispatchers. And it was before Hurricane Katrina taught us that buses and coaches would occasionally have to serve as short-term homes.

This installment of “Buying Tomorrow’s Buses Today” identifies some equipment issues\C2 related to enhanced visibility apart from those related to improvements in exterior and interior lighting and mirrors (see installment #7 in NBT, September, 2006: “Buying Tomorrow’s Buses Today, Part 7: Illumination and Visibility). This installment covers reflectors, windshields, windows, cameras, motion sensors, signage, driver’s compartment adjustments and a few features that do not fall neatly into any categories. The treatment below does not and cannot cover every piece of equipment, much less their nuances, much less the model-by-model nuances of each manufacturers’ product lines. Thus, the comments below do

This installment of “Buying Tomorrow’s Buses Today” identifies some equipment issues related to exterior and interior lighting, and mirrors. The next installment will address other aspects of enhanced visibility, including windshields, windows, cameras, motion sensors, reflectors, signage and adjustable driver’s seats. Exterior Lighting My own night vision is not what it once was. So I paid close attention to a recent study claiming that someone age 50 has roughly half the night vision he or she had at age 25. That study suggested effectively that it was not safe to drive at night over 40 mph. While I am not

The characteristics of a bus or coach exterior and interior can effect its ability to avoid a collision, and to protect passengers should one occur. Parts #2 (Structures & Suspension Systems) and #5 (Seating) of this series dealt with major elements of exterior and interior crashworthiness. This installment addresses additional elements whose features may be somewhat less familiar, including some that may go unnoticed. This installment also includes the treatment of some features germane to other types of buses – particularly school buses and transit buses. And it includes a few that NBT readers may consider far-fetched. But these features

Buying Tomorrow’s Buses Today, Part 5: Seating Ned Einstein (Transportation Alternatives, New York, NY) Anil V. Khadilkar, Ph. D (AVK Engineering, Huntington Beach, CA) Like the pupil transportation community before us, the motorcoach community is hearing the clamor for seat belts. Citing European and Australian requirements for motorcoach seatbelts, these cries have been amplified, more recently, by a handful of catastrophic motorcoach accidents where seats have been torn from their anchorages or seating systems otherwise compromised. Unlike school bus riders, motorcoach passengers enjoy some degree of lateral containment, at least when their arm rests are deployed. And they enjoy padded,

No part of a bus or coach with no moving parts is usually as poorly thought out as the stepwell. Apart from brakes and tires, no single element of a bus or coach is as responsible for as much mayhem. With a few artistic exceptions (spiral staircases and splayed bottom steps), every building’s stairwell contains regularly-shaped and regularly-spaced steps: Every step is a rectangle of the same size and proportions as the others. Each step lies the same distance away from the step above and below. And at least one side of the staircase contains a oblique, linear handrail parallel

Buying Tomorrow’s Buses Today, Part 3: Doors Ned Einstein (Transportation Alternatives, New York, NY) Dennis McNeill (Alternative Solutions International, Thousand Oaks, CA) Apart from brakes and tires, no pair of bus or coach components is as responsible for as many incidents and injuries as doors and stepwells. This installment of NBT deals with doors. The next installment, Part 4, will address stepwells. No part of a bus is as needlessly complex as the rear door operating system – including its interlock with the brake system and/or throttle. Current motorcoach rear door configurations involve only “passive lifts” (with the exception of